Young, female, helpless
We are all, in our weak moment. Peter Preston.' Who makes this - rd).lYing attack on the editor of the Guar- _1.40 Not some reader upset that the jailor allows infantile trendiness to dis- figure a newspaper at one time proud to advertise its origins in Manchester, not Islington: the attacker is the writer David e „ ante, whom Mr Preston in turn describes QS a devious, sloppy and malevolent oper-
ator with a rare disregard for fact and a rare talent for obsessed distortion.' Perhaps their quarrel has grown so heated because there is a woman involved. The gallant Mr Caute devotes 25 pages of the latest issue of Granta to an assault on Mr Preston for having betrayed 'a real victim, young, female, helpless'. When a lady is done down by a cad, Mr Caute is implac- able as a Dornford Yates hero. Cold with rage, he sets out to discover the inside story of how Miss Sarah Tisdall was shop- ped by the editor of the Guardian. It is here that he encounters difficulties as awesome as those that confronted Berry and Co, for none of the journalists on the freedom-of-information-loving Guardian will tell him what happened. They become evasive. They say, 'No comment'. They lie to him. He finds that 'the game of truth plays second fiddle to the game of secrecy.' And yet, he sorrowfully concludes, 'Fleet Street is no worse than the society that sponsors it.' He himself can remember sessions of the Executive Council of the Writers' Guild, another body which favours freedom of information but is not disposed to publish details of its own meetings. Everyone cherishes privacy: in a memorable phrase, Mr Caute observes that 'the secrets of the bedroom are only 30 minutes on the underground from the Official Secrets Act.' If Mr Caute's analysis is right, the supporters of freedom of information will need to widen their draft legislation to include not merely Whitehall, but Fleet Street and human nature too.
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